Tornado Hitting A House- Attica, KS (Harper County) May 12th, 2004

Wow, I can't believe that this was over 5 years ago already! Definitely one of my top chase days of all time. Many people just think of the Attica tornado hitting the house on the east side of town when I talk about this chase, but in reality we saw several tornadoes that day! The first tornado was near the town of Sharon, KS. This video starts off with that tornado. It was a beautiful elephant trunk which at first was low contrast, but the contrast got better as the tornado began picking up the red dust that was in the field. The second tornado was the Attica tornado. This tornado formed just to the south of town, and just south of Route 160 which was the road we were on. As it moved northwest, it hit one house on the east side of town, and thankfully...the two occupants inside escaped unharmed. If this tornado would have formed just a little further to the west, it would have hit the town directly, thankfully this did not happen. The Attica tornado was rated by the old scale, and it was given an F2 rating. The third tornado we witnessed was a little further east on Route 160 in Harper County. This tornado also formed south of the road and we filmed it for quite a while before deciding to head further east to stay out of the approaching core. We believe that it was this third tornado that ended up becoming the F4 that hit a house in the town of Harper, KS right around night fall. Thankfully once again, there were no serious injuries. Oh yeah, we also had a satellite tornado form right on the road in front of us that day too, lol. So all in all, that makes 4 tornadoes that we witnessed that day! Definitely a chase day to remember. Scott McPartland